Caribbean chaos

Press, 22 September 1983, Page 8

Caribbean chaos

The confusion which dogged the Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon’s, stay in the twin island state of St KittsNevis turned into chaos by the time he reached Trinidad late yesterday. Just about everything that can go wrong organisationally has gone wrong on the Caribbean section of his 25-day overseas tour. After a gruelling day of missed planes and long stopovers it was small wonder his accompanying New Zealand officials — with the whole-hearted endorsement of a weary Mrs Thea Muldoon — were openly expressing their misgivings at visiting the Caribbean.

The series of misadventures on St Kitts for the independence celebrations — wrong hotels and a unique approach to protocol to mention but a few —

were, it was hoped, all in the past when the party left early yesterday morning (New Zealand time) for Trinidad and the major goal, the Commonwealth Finance Ministers’ conference.

But it was just the start of many more headaches.

The party’s plane left an overcrowded St Kitts’ Airport on yet another steamy tropical day, an hour late. A failure to reconfirm the onward booking from Antigua further south meant instant disaster.

The Prime Minister and his party were again given up for lost and the seat on British West Indian Airlines was given to someone else. So what was expected to be a short flight to Trinidad became an all-day affair, with officials in Antigua confirming and changing flights about as fast as the frequent tropical raln-

storms. Eventually a plane with empty seats was found and the party thankfully looked forward to some higher standard accommodation and organisation in Trinidad.

But to its horror there were even more problems in Port of Spain. The conference organisation here is at best chaotic. Accommodation was not available for the whole party (some had to bunk down together last night) and New Zealand Treasury officials, who had arrived several days earlier, reported that very little seemed to be going smoothly.

But at least . the New Zealand party was not grizzling in isolation: apparently 100 other delegates from various Commonwealth countries also arrived at the Trinidad Hilton yesterday to discover a room booked for them had already been filled.

Through it all Mr Muldoon remained remarkably calm, although those round him steadily lost their cool.

At least while in St Kitts he had a chance to catch up on some interesting reading — the soon-to-be-released autobiography by the man he deposed in controversial circumstances as leader of the National Party in 1974, Sir John Marshall. Mr Muldoon has been commissioned to review the work but at this stage he is keeping his thoughts on its merits to himself.

Asked what he thought of it during one of yesterday’s stopovers, he said, “Read the review.”